NO EXIT

No Exit

No Exit

Introduction

No Exit is not about traditional punishment for sin. There is no consideration of God, and the functionaries of Hell are seen less as demons than as bureaucrats. Jean-Paul Sartre uses the concept of Hell as a semihumorous frame. Here is a torture chamber in the guise of an overheated hotel salon. The bellboy has an uncle to visit in off-hours, the head valet in Hell. This ironic frame serves to explore ideas about self-definition and interpersonal relations drawn from existential philosophy. Everything serves in definition of the characters or their situation.

Thesis Statement

Sartre has said of this play that “...many people are encrusted in a set of habits..., that they harbor judgments about them which make them suffer, but do not even try to change them.” Such people, he says, are already dead. While he does suggest that it is difficult to know oneself initially except through the eyes of other people, mature living demands that one renounce self-chosen hells and accept responsibility for oneself and others.

Analysis

Throughout the action to follow, it becomes clear that Estelle, although technically guilty of murder, is in Hell mainly because of her passive, unexamined life, lived in “bad faith” and in hopes of pleasing the Other, whomever he/she may be. Garcin, shot by firing squad at the start of World War II, ostensibly for his pacifist convictions, still fears that he might have been considered a deserter and a coward, having been arrested in flight between Brazil and Mexico City.

Inès Serrano, more lucid than the other two about their collective situation, may seem at first glance to be ill-placed in Sartre's selective Hell, serving so often as the playwright's “voice” and spokesperson. On reflection, however, it becomes clear that Inès has chosen her own Hell, never having questioned society's judgment of ...